This post is written by guest blogger Gina Loveless, MI Leadership Events Team Leader

OK—so February is proving to be quite a month already and we are only at Day 3! Groundhog Phil saw his shadow which means 6 more weeks of winter! I need those 6 weeks to keep exploring all these great tech finds! Bring on the snow and give me some snow days! I want time to check out Skype 4 for Windows. Yes, Skype has released a new version that includes an updated interface, a new bandwidth manager to keep the Tech. Department off your back (up to 50% less they say), and full screen face to face video.

And if that’s not enough to keep me busy on those snow days, Google Earth 5 is sounding like a dream come true. It may even be touted as the “Educators release”. They’ve added a feature called Google Ocean which allows users to interact with a 3-D version of the ocean floor. Google apparently has partnered with National Geographic (again), BBC, and Cousteu’s Ocean World to help provide a wealth of information to support the maps. Science and Social Studies teachers should have a ball with this latest release.

On the video front, I also recently ran across a must-see on You Tube. (No groaning if you’re still at school.) It’s a talk by Larry Lessig about Intellectual Property in the Digital Economy. It was hosted at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on December 16, 2008. I ran across it by accident and before I knew it, I was engulfed. It’s a good 55 minute talk followed by 30 minutes of Q & A. He compares copyright to prohibition in a beautifully orchestrated speech. No death by PowerPoint here!